Waking up to WisdomIn Stillness and Community

Dear Somik, thanks for your thoughts about "beliefs" creating "experiences." In my case, my experiences definitely created my current beliefs. I really thought I could change things out here by being good and caring and sharing and taking care of others, and all I got was robbed and almost killed for my efforts. Efforts that lasted over ten years. So I have definitley changed my beliefs.

But I think it is time to stop thinking the whole world will be like these good-for-nothings that really don't care what they do or who they hurt. I have found a new group of people that really do seem to care about the world and the people in it. I think I am AFRAID to "believe" again and have all the bad things come back down all around me, like rain in a thunderstorm and hurricanes and tsunamis. That is what it was like before. If you've never been around or lived around hypocrites, liars, drug addicts, alcoholics and thieves, you probably don't know what I am talking about, but it's not a pretty picture or a positive environment. People warned me over and over that I was spending time with dangerous, unreliable and manipulative people, but I believed the "best of people" and refused to listen. It almost cost me my life, in a number of different ways. Ten years of HELL that I brought on myself by "trying to help" and "make a difference" and I believed they just hadn't had a chance yet and all the other white liberal middle class b.s. I really believed in. I sure learned different, the hard way. So I don't believe it's my "beliefs" that created my cynicism. It's my experience that did.

Now I've put up a fence around our property (a literal, physical fence and an emotional one) and have moved part-time to a place I can afford that IS in a much more positive environment, so some kind of faith is coming back, however slender it may be. I don't blame myself so much for endangering my life, despite repeated warnings, as I really believed that racism was wrong and that if only people "really knew" how the "other side lived," and helped those "poor people" everything would change. People used to call me a saint. Now I call myself a fool. I hope I never make those same mistakes again. Foolish is putting it mildly. People end up in prison because they earned the right to be there. I don't have to give them an opportunity to go back there after robbing, threatening or killing me.

You wrote: "This comment was not for others doing wrong things, but for you (and me) who are trying to determine whether anger is a good decision or not."

OK. That makes sense.

I don't have guilt about their decisions, but fear about what they might again do to me, or try to do to me! It's made me fearful and angry and I have to find a way to let this go.

Then you talked about "guilt about others mistakes." I don't think they are "mistakes" but concious actions designed to hurt and damage and destroy, but your earlier talk about "gardens being destroyed" and everything is destroyed at one time or another is something important to think about. Alright. I think I am "hooked." I can look at this new kind of thinking and see if I can fit myself in there somewhere.

Especially the part about Ghandi and cowards, and violence vs. nonviolence and asserting oneself, in the best possible way.

I can try to do that and I will. I will finish reading all that has been written here and check out the links and begin this "new course of study." Finally, someone is explaining things in a way I can understand and a way I can "stand." No namby-pamby stuff here. Much appreciated.

I had no idea I was in this state of mind until I started responding to this site. Whew! I have a long way to go, but with an end in sight. Gracias amigos.

Last but not least, you wrote:

"About games, we are all playing "human" games here. We are role-playing so many different roles. Unfortunately, unlike actors who shed their on-screen persona when they come home (or head toward dementia), we do not know to do that, at least not without significant kicking and screaming. :)"

Well, alright. LOL. I'll have to think about that one, but I will. Buenos Noches.